![photo](https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/wp-content/themes/businesslounge-child/html/assets/img/image/zaglushka.png)
Ukrainian World Congress welcomes new sanctions targeting Russian economy
The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) welcomes the new sanctions imposed on 29 July 2014 against specific sectors of the Russian economy as a positive development in the campaign to end Russia’s military intervention and aggression against Ukraine.
The United States, the European Union and Canada moved forward in a coordinated manner by announcing specific sanctions targeting Russia’s energy, arms and finance sectors.
Among the targets of the new measures are Russia’s largest banks, a Russian-state owned defense technology firm and the oil sector. The sanctions will curtail Russian access to U.S., EU and Canadian capital markets.
“This is a choice that Russia, and President Putin in particular, has made,” U.S. President Barack Obama stated following the announcement, adding that “Today, Russia is once again isolating itself from the international community, setting back decades of genuine progress.”
Announcing the sanctions, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy stated, “It is meant as a strong warning: illegal annexation of territory and deliberate destabilisation of a neighbouring sovereign country cannot be accepted in 21st century Europe.”
“Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the European Union has been calling on the Russian leadership to work towards a peaceful resolution,” continued the European Union statement. “Our call has been, in practice, left unheeded. Arms and fighters continue flowing into Ukraine from the Russian Federation. Strong Russian State sponsored nationalist propaganda continues supporting the illegal actions of armed separatists. We have witnessed with anger and frustration the delays in providing international access to the site of the air crash, the tampering with the remains of the plane, and the disrespectful handling of the deceased.”
Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper highlighted in his announcement, “President Putin’s failure to end his support to armed rebel groups constitutes a very real threat to international peace and security. His actions represent an overt, direct threat to the Ukrainian people and its rightfully elected government.”
“The Ukrainian World Congress welcomes these coordinated targeted sector-specific sanctions as a positive move by the international community in sending a stronger message to the Russian Federation that its illegal annexation of Crimea and military aggression against a sovereign country will not to be tolerated,” stated UWC President Eugene Czolij. “We urge the international community to maintain the pressure on President Putin to bring an end to this conflict of global proportion.”